Rise and Shine! It’s the Alice B. Toklas Club Pride Breakfast

Once again, that charmer Senator Mark Leno invited me to sit at his table at the Alice B. Toklas Club’s Annual Pride Breakfast. And once again, I found myself surrounded by almost every politician in town eating pork buns at 8 a.m. If you’re into politics in San Francisco, the Pride Breakfast is the place to be.

Held at the Rincon Center Atrium and catered by Yank Sing on Pride Sunday, Pride Breakfast is like political class picture day. To attempt political office an San Francisco and blow off the Pride Breakfast is, from the looks of the turnout, campaign suicide. One must never snub the gays.

Yank Sing is perfectly located at the parade staging area where, in addition to the myriad of celebrities, organizations, schools and businesses that participate in the Pride Parade, all of the politicians and their contingents line up. Bright and early at 8 a.m., the likes of Leland Yee and Joanna Rees don their flashiest pink tops and show up at Yank Sing. Most major politicians and campaigns buy entire tables and fill them with staff, volunteers, supporters and the occasional weirdo.

I arrived at the same time as former Supervisor Michela Alioto-Pier and Board President David Chiu, both candidates for Mayor. We all kinda came in together. And we were late.

Neither Chaz Bono nor Olympia Dukakis were here. I checked.

The atrium of Rincon Center was overflowing with wonk types, many of whom seemed to be sporting mayoral candidate t-shirts.

If you run for office in San Francisco, you not only need to attend the Alice Pride breakfast, but you need dozens of people wearing bright, cheerful t-shirts.

I don’t know how he does it, but year after year, Mark Leno gets the best table in the place. And I made my way over to see with whom I’d be spinning the Lazy Susan. Last year, we sat with then-Police Chief George Gascon, President pro Tempore of the California State Senate, Darrell Steinberg and then-Gubernatorial candidate Jerry Brown. Who, oh who, would be soy-saucing my buns this year?

Much to my amazement, our table was free of wonks. Instead, I found international fashion icon Tatiana Sorokko and her husband, art dealer and gallery owner Serge Sorokko. Tatiana Sorokko is a contributing editor to BIBLES such as Vogue, Vanity Fair and Harper’s Bazaar. She is on International Best-Dressed Lists. Plural. Those are the Oscars of personal fashion. She is fabulously glamorous and none of those political nerds in attendance realized that we were all in the presence of sartorial and society greatness.

Also sitting at Mark’s table was environmentalist Carol Misseldine, wife of the late Marin County Supervisor Charles McGlashan. And just like last year, Mark’s fun family joined us, including his sister Jamie and her partner who ride motorcycles in the parade. The Leno Family is very funny and will talk about normal things. It was a nice break from the constant, “Will Ed Lee run for Mayor?!?”

I can’t wait until Ed Lee isn’t mayor anymore so I can pinch his cheeks without getting arrested.

The speeches began and dim sum started to arrive, but I had trouble paying any attention to either as I was rubber-necking that atrium to see who was where and what they were wearing.

Mayor Ed Lee was two tables over, cute as a button. Ross Mirkarimi was swathed in a rainbow feather boa, and Leland Yee sported a pink Hawaiian shirt. Mark Leno was in his signature leather pants, Jane Kim rocked a strapless white party dress and Joanna Rees was in a super-sexy mini-dress and bright pink wedge heels.

No, this isn’t awkward at all. They’re probably super tight.

I am biased, as he was my host for the breakfast, but Mark Leno gave the best speech, including a jab at Arnold Schwarzennegger who clearly has no concept of the vows of his own marriage, much less anyone else’s. After New York’s thriumphant passing of a bill legalizing gay marriage, there was much discussion of homosexual nuptials at Alice’s Price Breakfast, with lots of thunderous applause and clanging of chopsticks.

I was seated in between my good friends, the Examiner’s Melissa Griffin and SFist’s Brock Keeling. I’m always stuck between those two, and as Melissa went off to schmooze, Brock and I chatted about movies with Tatiana and Serge. Brock, perhaps a tad flustered at discussing Woody Allen with someone who practically lives on the pages of Vogue, tried to serve himself some chow mein while offering bon mots on film festivals.

Hey Alice Club. You know what’s easy to eat? Yogurt and granola.

Noodle disasters aside, the Alice Pride Breakfast was once again the wonkiest way to kick-off Pride Sunday, even if attendance requires waking up at an ungodly hour and watching straight male politicians awkwardly adjust their pink beaded necklaces.

Happy Pride!

All of the photos in the post were taken by photo-legend Bill Wilson, who graciously agreed to let me use them. Bill is a San Francisco treasure, and you should check out his photos from just about every event in town RIGHT HERE.

Beth Spotswood has posted weekly on the Culture Blog for 4 years and still struggles when folks ask her to define “a blog.” None the less, she posts twice a week for SFGate and all day long over at her desk in the CBS San Francisco newsroom. You can follow her on Twitter, watch her co-anchor the political satire show Necessary Conversation or run into her in the real world, where she also exists.